UPCOMING EVENT: SECOND ANNUAL IN-PERSON MEETING OF THE SOCAL COLLABORATIVE

On October 19th, 2018, faculty and leadership from our many regional 2- and 4- year partners will convene at UCLA to discuss updates on the Alliance award funding and what this means for us as a regional collaborative. This will include sharing information about existing professional development opportunities that can now be better promoted/marketed with the support of a new regional coordinator to increase regional participation and access. Another primary goal of the meeting is to come together to start planning for additional grant proposals that can build on the Alliance funds to strengthen and expand regional assessment initiatives, education research goals, internship/mentorship experiences, and other professional development opportunities for current and future faculty in our region. If you would like to join please contact Jess Gregg (jessgregg@ceils.ucla.edu) for more details.

CIRTL Online Events

The Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL) seeks to enhance excellence in STEM undergraduate education through development of a national faculty committed to implementing and advancing evidence-based teaching practices for diverse learners. CIRTL was founded in 2003 as a National Science Foundation Center for Learning and Teaching in higher education. CIRTL uses graduate education as the leverage point to develop a national STEM faculty committed to implementing and advancing effective teaching practices for diverse student audiences as part of successful professional careers. The goal of CIRTL is to improve the STEM learning of all students at every college and university, and thereby to increase the diversity in STEM fields and the STEM literacy of the nation.

Online webinars and trainings can be accessed at cirtl.net. When creating your free account to register, please select “Southern California Regional Collaborative” as your home institution if you are not currently an instructor at a CIRTL institution.

Regional Programs, Trainings, Institutes

3CSN - California Community College Success Network

3CSN’s Mission

Develop leaders in California community colleges who have the capacity to facilitate networks of faculty, staff, and students for curricular and institutional redesigns in support of increased student access, success, equity, and completion.

Values and shared assumptions

Everybody (students, faculty, staff) has the right to ongoing, sustained, and rigorous learning experiences to further their personal, educational, and professional growth.

Learning is a network forming process: connections and relationships are crucial to the learning process.

Deep learning and leadership are facilitated by maintaining:

An appreciative inquiry mindset, i.e., curiosity about what’s possible o A growth mindset, i.e., a belief that change is possible.

The Summer Institutes on Scientific Teaching

The Summer Institutes on Scientific Teaching empower and inspire college and university instructors to transform STEM education through evidence-based teaching practices. The Summer Institutes are dedicated to STEM education reform, improving science literacy, attracting more diverse students to research and increasing the number of students who become scientists at colleges and universities across the United States.

The Summer Institutes model the scientific teaching principles they promote and support participants in directly applying these principles to the development of teaching materials. The curriculum of the Summer Institutes incorporates active learning strategies, effective assessment development, and inclusive teaching practices. Summer Institutes alumni are actively transforming STEM education on their home campuses, contributing to national STEM education initiatives and disseminating their evidence-based teaching efforts and research through publications.

Learn more and find out about regional Summer Institutes here:

https://www.summerinstitutes.org/

Community College Faculty Institute - HERI

Higher Education Research Institute Community College Faculty Institute

Community colleges are wonderfully complex institutions where terms take on a different meaning than they do in the four-year context. Diversity, for example, goes beyond the traditional perspective of race, class and gender, taking on a more complex and complete view of the lives students at community colleges experience (Deil-Amen, 2011).

The Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA invites community college faculty from all places/regions in California to join to talk about our pedagogical practices, and to learn how to become more effective instructors.

Academy of Inquiry-Based Learning (AIBL)

The Academy of Inquiry-Based Learning (AIBL) is an association of professors, instructors, teachers and non-teaching supporters (such as retired professors/teachers having IBL experience, administrators, foundation personnel) who are committed to developing and disseminating inquiry-based learning (IBL) techniques.

The central goals of AIBL are promotion and development of IBL approaches to the teaching of mathematics. The underlying belief is that guided inquiry learning experiences should be available to all students. Students should construct their own understanding of Mathematics, learn higher-level thinking skills, and develop healthy habits of mind.

AIBL will foster development and dissemination of IBL techniques through

(1) Support and encouragement of faculty and teachers via mentoring, small grants, workshops, and networking
(2) Dissemination of IBL teaching and learning materials
(3) Leveraging Web 2.0 technologies to foster a supportive community of IBL users
(4) Development of a central, searchable database providing

If you would like to learn more about AIBL or have questions, please email Stan Yoshinobu . Questions regarding the database should be directed to the AIBL Co-Director Mark Stankus

Professor Stan Yoshinobu, Department of Mathematics, is the director of the Academy of Inquiry-Based Learning. Professor Mark Stankus, Department of Mathematics, is the co-director of the Academy of Inquiry-Based Learning.

USC Center for Urban Education

The Center for Urban Education:

Achieving racial equity by partnering with educational systems to change policies and practices

its founding in 1999, the USC Rossier Center for Urban Education (CUE) has worked to bring equity-mindedness to institutions of higher education through socially conscious research, tools and learning institutes. CUE empowers practitioners to act as agents of change, enabling them to be critically race conscious as they respond to changing demographics in our educational systems.

CUE helps faculty, administrators and other college and university staff better under-stand the harmful effects of invisible forms of racism on their campuses. CUE’s primary projects include:

EQUITY-MINDEDNESS INSTITUTES

Throughout the year, CUE convenes institutes for practitioners on equity in faculty hiring, student success, pedagogical practices, leadership and policy development. CUE has convened institutes for researchers on critical action research, critical quantitative research methods and critical policy analysis, as well as change labs focused on racial equity in STEM. Attracting participants from across the country, the institutes are helping countless education professionals become more equity-minded, creating ongoing ripples of positive effects on campuses nationwide.

EQUITY SCORECARD

CUE pioneered the Equity Scorecard, a five-phase institutional transformation intervention to achieve racial equity in access, retention and degree attainment. Both a process and a data tool, the Equity Scorecard combines a theoretical framework with practical strategies meant to initiate institutional change that will lead to equitable outcomes for minoritized students. The process engages leaders, faculty and staff to examine campus data, practices and policies through the lens of the Scorecard to better understand and correct entrenched racial equity issues.

The Center for Urban Education developed the framework for equity-minded practice and policy that has been adopted by foundations, associations and institutions of higher education nationally. CUE has helped hundreds of practitioners and institutions become equity-minded by teaching them to effectively question their own assumptions, recognize racial stereotypes that harm student success and continually reassess their practices to create change.

CUE created the Percentage Point Gap formula to calculate racial equity goals — a formula that has been adopted by California’s Community College Chancellor. CUE’s Equity Scorecard, meanwhile, has been used by over 100 educational institutions, including 43 in California, as well as the Wisconsin and Pennsylvania state university systems, the US Coast Guard Academy, and many others. To date, over 60 California institutions of higher education have participated in CUE’s ongoing equity-mindedness institutes.

Regional Conferences

Achieving the Dream - Annual Conference

SPECIAL 15TH ACHIEVING THE DREAM CONVENING IN 2019

For 15 years, Achieving the Dream has been working with colleges across the country to redesign the student experience to increase credential attainment and close opportunity gaps. In February 2019, ATD will kick-off its 15th anniversary year at the annual DREAM convening, in Long Beach, CA, February 19-22.

DREAM is Achieving the Dream’s annual convening, bringing together more than 2,000 influential policy-makers, investors, thought leaders, and practitioners from colleges throughout the country to talk about emerging strategies for critical issues such as equity, increasing student success, increasing capacity for data analysis, program evaluation, and student-centered, data-informed decision- making. DREAM is open to colleges and universities inside and outside of the Achieving the Dream Network.

Through plenaries, spotlight sessions, and hundreds of concurrent hands-on workshop and sessions, participants have opportunities to share their own work and to meet informally with colleagues and speakers in receptions and other special events. The event is uniquely designed to provide multiple opportunities for individuals and teams from community colleges and four-year institutions to be active participants and to bring new learning, fresh ideas, and renewed energy back to their campuses

DREAM 2019 CALL FOR SESSION PROPOSALS NOW OPEN!

Become part of the program at the DREAM 2019 15th Annual Conference by conducting a Concurrent Session or presenting during the informative and fast-paced 20×20 Presentations. For more information and to submit your Achieving the Dream 2019 Session Proposals or reserve a slot for a 20×20 Presentations timeslot click here.

Pathways Session and Tackling Tomorrow’s Challenges Session proposals are due September 28, 2018. Proposals for the 20×20 Presentation are due November 16, 2018.

The third annual SABER West conference will be held on January 19 and 20, 2019 at the campus of the University of California, Irvine. SABER is the Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research and was founded in 2010. For more information on SABER, please visit the SABER website: link.

Plenary talks by Dr. Renee Cole of the University of Iowa and Dr. Tatiana Melguizo of the University of Southern California

The goals of the meeting are to:

Increase interactions among STEM educators and education researchers.

Foster collaborations between 2 year and 4 year institutions.

Provide professional development to conduct education research and implement evidence-based teaching practices.

The SoCal PKAL network is one of many of the Project Kaleidoscope networks from across the country. Our network includes scientists from the Claremont Colleges, University of LaVerne, CSUF, CSULA, University of Redlands, Whittier College, and CSULB. Please become part of this group and help them collaborate to improve science education across our region.

The Southern California regional conference is typically held in the spring.